A collaborative project between IDEA START and The Centre for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning, the IDEA START Podcast amplifies voices from across disciplines and corners of campus.

Hosted by Rajeev Koyal of IDEA START and Janine Carmichael of The Centre for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning, each episode dives deep into the stories and ideas that demonstrate UM’s innovative spirit and meaningful support.

“We created this podcast to celebrate and connect with the many people across campus who are reimagining what is possible,” says Koyal. “It’s also a space to learn from each other and to make the work of innovation more visible.”

Highlights from Season One:

• UM President Dr. Michael Benarroch shares his vision for entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial learning at UM.
• The 100^Th UMSU President Divya Sharma and UMSU General Manager Thomas Blumer introduce UMSU Ventures – a new space to help student entrepreneurs bring their venture to life on campus.
• Debra Jonasson-Young, Director of the Stu Clark Centre for Entrepreneurship, outlines key supports for students of all disciplines.
• Dr. Brenda Stoesz, who leads the Science of Teaching and Learning Team shares how Virtual Reality is being used to reimagine faculty development.
• Dr. Loren Oschipok, Partnerships, Knowledge Mobilization and Innovation Office Director dives into strategies for protecting and advancing intellectual property.

With episodes running approximately 30 minutes, the podcast is designed for busy students, faculty, staff, and alumni who want to stay inspired and connected.

Where to Listen

The IDEA START Podcast is available on all major platforms: Listen or watch on YouTube, Yuja, or listen on Spotify. New episodes drop monthly during the academic year.

“Whether you’re launching a venture, integrating creativity into your teaching, or just curious about how innovation shows up and is supported at UM, there’s something in these stories for you,” says Carmichael.

To listen or learn more, visit IDEA START Podcast.

Do you have guest suggestions for Season 2? Reach out to Rajeev Koyal or Janine Carmichael.

Decolonizing Classrooms: Indigenous Approaches to Building Good Relationships

Date and time: Thursday, September 19, 9:30 AM to 12:30 PM

Over the past several years, an important discussion of how we can Indigenize and decolonize the academy has been occurring. This workshop series aims to give participants the context and tools necessary to meaningfully engage with decolonizing processes as they relate to education. “Indigenous Approaches to Building Good Relationships” will discuss how participants can employ the 4/5Rs (relevance, reciprocity, respect, responsibility, and relationships) to ameliorate and decolonize student-instructor relationships. Indigenous ways of understanding relationships and specific tools and strategies that instructors can use will be considered, and participants will be supported as they consider how they can implement the 4/5 Rs in their own teaching practices.

Register for the Decolonizing Classrooms workshop

Small Shifts, Significant Gains: Transformative Teaching Strategies Series

Date and time: Thursday, September 26, 1:15 PM to 2:15 PM

Looking for ways to revitalize your teaching but don’t have time for a big redesign? In Small Teaching James Lang argues that small changes in classroom techniques and activities can have big impacts on student learning. Drop in to any or all of these brown bag lunchtime chats to hear creative strategies from your faculty colleagues across the university. Bring your questions and your lunch. Leave with ideas you can implement right away in your courses!

Session One, Lightning Presentations:

• Danielle Yaffe (College of Nursing) presents: Make Learning Fun with Interactive Drag-and-Drop PowerPoint Activities
• Lisa Ford and Janna Wilson (both from the Department of Environment and Geography) present: Transparent Learning: Course Alignment using Learning Objectives Table

Register for the Small Shifts, Significant Gains workshop

More updates to this workshop series will be posted soon.

Date and time: Thursday, June 13, 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM

Create pages in UM Learn from HTML templates, discover best practices in managing files, and understand your legal responsibility in creating accessible content. Explore various media objects that can be created for your courses in collaboration with the Centre’s Media team.

Register for the Panorama workshop

Open Educational Resources – What, How, Why (Part 1)

Date and time: Tuesday, June 18, 1:00 PM – 2:30 PM

The term open educational resources (OER) describes a wide range of materials in teaching and learning that are available for public use with an open license or in the public domain. Examples of OER include full courses, course modules, syllabi, textbooks, lectures, assessments, and datasets. In this workshop, participants will learn why OER are valuable, how to locate them, how to evaluate them using a rubric, and how to adapt and create them. The workshop does not assume prior experience with these topics. 

Register for the open educational resources series.

Best Practices in Providing High Stakes Feedback in Clinical Instruction

Date and time: Thursday, June 20, 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM

This workshop is offered to all educators in Health Sciences who teaches in classroom, lab, and clinical settings. The purpose of this workshop is to inform  about the best practices in giving high stakes feedback in their classroom, lab, and clinical instruction. 

Register for the high stakes feedback in clinical instruction workshop

The Flipped Classroom

Date and time: Tuesday, June 25, 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM

Interested in more knowledge application and problem-solving activities in your classroom? Looking to add more active learning to a traditional lecture course? Come to this workshop and learn the basics of a flipped classroom that will enable you to flip a lesson or two in an upcoming course.

Register for the flipped classroom workshop

SoTL Ethics

Date and time: Tuesday, June 25, 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM

Research with human participants requires approval from the UM Research Ethics Board to ensure the safety and well-being of all participants. This is true of all research with human participants, but SoTL projects often have unique characteristics that warrant extra consideration when preparing an ethics application. For example, how do you ensure that students do not feel coerced to give consent when the instructor of their course is also the lead researcher? In this workshop, we will provide possible solutions for this and other research design elements that require careful consideration of ethical practices when designing your SoTL study. We will also review the Research Ethics application process at the University of Manitoba, and attendees will be given the opportunity to begin to draft their ethics application. This workshop will be interactive and collaborative. To get the most of this workshop, please bring a laptop or device to the workshop. 

Register for the SoTL ethics workshop

Date and time: Eight sessions available from February 5 – 16.

Experiential learning is recognized as a high-impact practice in postsecondary education with positive impacts on student learning and retention, student engagement, career-readiness and community involvement. In light of these benefits, The University of Manitoba is invested in supporting faculties and instructors with the enhancement and expansion of experiential learning opportunities for students in academic courses and programs. The Office of Experiential Learning is leading these consultations to better understand the experiences of faculty members, instructors and staff involved in the development and delivery of curricular experiential learning opportunities for students. The information collected will be used to create recommendations to enhance existing practices, remove barriers and design effective supports.

All faculty members, instructors, and staff involved in the development and delivery of curricular experiential learning opportunities for students are invited to participate.  Participation in these consultations is voluntary. To ensure confidentiality, no potentially identifying information will be reported. Individual responses will not be shared with others. Findings will be reported in aggregated form.

Lunch will be provided at in-person sessions.

Register for the Experiential Learning Community Consultations

Open Educational Resources, Part 1

Date and time: Wednesday, February 14, 2024, 9:30 – 11:00 AM

The term open educational resources (OER) describes a wide range of materials in teaching and learning that are available for public use with an open license or in the public domain. Examples of OER include full courses, course modules, syllabi, textbooks, lectures, assessments, and datasets. In this workshop, participants will learn why OER are valuable, how to locate them, how to evaluate them using a rubric, and how to adapt and create them. The workshop does not assume prior experience with these topics.

Register for the Open Educational Resources workshop

Creating Connections in SoTL: Learning From Colleagues

Date and time: Thursday, February 15, 2024, 10:00 – 11:15 AM

In the Creating Connections in SoTL series, faculty, instructors, and other UM scholars explore foundational topics in SoTL research, discuss ongoing SoTL projects, make interdisciplinary connections, and receive support from colleagues and Centre SoTL Developers. In this online workshop we will hear from a presenter (TBC) from the 2023 Symposium for Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. This presenter will share lessons learned from conducting and disseminating SoTL research, and answer questions from attendees. We will also provide time for participants to share their SoTL study progress in small groups, discuss challenges, and provide mutual support.

Register for the Creating Connections in SoTL workshop

Experiential Learning Community of Practice

Date and time: Wednesday, February 28, 2024, 2:30 – 3:30 PM

Facilitated by The Office of Experiential Learning, the Experiential Learning Community of Practice (CoP) meets online once a month. Each online meeting will consist of a 30-minute presentation on a topic related to best practices, trends, and challenges in experiential learning, followed by a 30-minute facilitated discussion.

Future-proofing students in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world.
Researchers and policymakers in various fields are adopting the term VUCA to describe the current state of our world. In this session, we’ll explore some of the skills, competencies, or capabilities that the UM and other post-secondary institutions have identified as highly relevant to any student’s ability to thrive in an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous future. Join us to learn about the UM’s recently developed competency framework!

Register for the Experiential Learning Community of Practice workshop

Planning Your SoTL Study

Date: Tuesday, January 23, 2024

In this workshop, participants will begin outlining a SoTL study. Building on an existing idea, participants will develop research questions and utilize quantitative and qualitative research methods to outline a plan for data collection and analysis. We will also work collaboratively to develop solutions to possible SoTL challenges and identify critical SoTL resources.​ To get the most out of this workshop participants should come with a developed SoTL research question in mind.

Register for Planning Your SoTL Study

Applying trauma-informed teaching practices online synchronous courses

Date: Friday, January 26, 2024

This introductory panel will discuss trauma-informed teaching and how to apply the basic concepts in your online teaching.

Register for Applying trauma-informed teaching practices online synchronous courses

Decolonizing Classrooms Part 2: Unpacking and Overcoming Barriers to Decolonizing Processes

Date: Tuesday, January 30, 2024

The Decolonizing Classroom series aims to give participants the context and tools necessary to meaningfully engage with decolonizing processes as they relate to education. “Unpacking and Overcoming Barriers to Engagement and Decolonizing Processes” explores the barriers that exist for teachers and students, which prevent them from enacting decolonizing processes in educational contexts. Part two of this workshop series discusses the barriers that prevent teachers from engaging fully in decolonizing classrooms and creates a space for the discussion of strategies for overcoming these barriers.

Register for Decolonizing Classrooms Part 2: Unpacking and Overcoming Barriers to Decolonizing Processes

Experiential Learning Community of Practice – January

Date: Wednesday, January 31, 2024.

Facilitated by The Office of Experiential Learning, the Experiential Learning Community of Practice meets online once a month. An Experiential Learning Townhall is organized once every academic term for CoP members who would like the opportunity to meet in-person.

Each online meeting will consist of a 30-minute presentation on a topic related to best practices, trends, and challenges in experiential learning, followed by a 30-minute facilitated discussion.

January: Why experiential learning now?
Enhancing and expanding experiential learning (EL) opportunities for students has become a priority for the UM and many other post-secondary institutions in Canada and abroad. However, EL has been around for a long time both in theory and practice. So, why has EL suddenly become the topic of the hour?
At this initial meeting of the EL CoP, we’ll explore the reasons that make experiential learning an appropriate response to the challenges facing postsecondary education today, and share updates about the UM’s upcoming Experiential Learning Framework for faculty and instructors.

Register for Experiential Learning Community of Practice – January

Veteran investigative journalist Cecil Rosner talks about teaching the course starting May 8th, and the importance of differentiating between what’s real and what’s fake.

Listen to the entire Global News interview

University of Manitoba extended education will be running a media literacy program that aims to help people identify fake news and evaluate the credibility of content in media using investigative journalism techniques.

The program will be instructed by Cecil Rosner, who developed the course. Rosner has over 40 years of experience as a journalist, and has worked as managing editor for CBC Manitoba and executive producer of The Fifth Estate.

“Everybody depends on media for understanding what’s going on in the world, so you have to be able to properly read the messages that come at you, whether it’s in media stories or on social media,” Rosner said.

The program will have sessions from May 8 to June 12 and will consist of a series of three courses, including “Media Literacy and Critical Thinking,” which will teach participants to assess sources, find reliable evidence and identify disinformation and bias.

“All kinds of organizations and individuals, and politicians and corporations are pushing messages at all of us, all the time, and it’s really important that we know how to properly assess those messages,” Rosner said.

One of the other two courses, titled “Understanding Public Records,” will teach participants to find their own reliable sources of information by accessing publicly available documents.

The third course, called “Advanced Investigative Journalism Techniques,” will teach citizens techniques used by journalists to locate reliable sources of information online “that go far beyond basic Google searching.” These methods include accessing information through databases, filing Access to Information requests and analyzing document metadata.

Rosner said that the contents of the program could be useful for many different types of people including students, teachers, activists and ordinary consumers. He said that methods used in investigative journalism, such as looking into the backgrounds of people and companies, are very useful in everyday life.

Read the full Manitoban article here